From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat Jun 14 2003 - 00:37:04 MDT
On Friday 13 June 2003 21:01, Damien Broderick wrote:
> At 08:30 PM 6/13/03 -0400, Michael Dickey wrote:
> >I feel Rand makes compelling arguments for an
> >objective basis for ethics, but I admit I am not yet intelligent enough to
> >fully defend or even comprehend them.
>
> Ahem. Well, I have been wondering about this (idly, you understand), since
> I assumed that you'd be a fan of Randian ethics. As I recall, John Galt and
> all the other supermen of reason abandoned the suffering people of the
> world and beat their retreat to a high mountaintop, leaving the world to
> crash and burn under the malign hands of losers, freeloaders, collectivists
> and unattractive people with names along the lines of Sneaky Weems. Would
> John Galt have supported a state invasion of Iraq? Would he have supported
> an invasion of collectivized USA, for that matter? Not as I read it.
>
Inaccurate. They realized that the system as it was would never ever help
"the suffering people of the world" and would make it impossible for them to
do any real good. So they redrew that it might collapse under its own weight
quickly. This arguably gave less net suffering and cleared the ground for
something different faster than other possible courses of action.
You are correct that no decent objectivist would support the invasion of Iraq
imho. But that is a good thing. Most objectivist believe that real change
will only come from change minds. I am not so sure that is a good thing.
But the original seems to be about whether there is an objective basis for
ethics. So I seem to be missing context that gave your reply meaning in
seeming response to that.
- samantha
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